


Wake From Restful Slumber

by ShiDreamin



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Mystery, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:16:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26205544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShiDreamin/pseuds/ShiDreamin
Summary: Vision had been the fault of Thanos. Wanda had cried, had borne her soul bare, had plunged red tendrils into her body and his and felt the weight of the world fracture the threads tying them together. She had torn herself into pieces, felt the remaining shards of her, of Vision, of Pietro, linked together by the mind stone, and she had shattered it. It had been awful, but it had been her choice.Then Thanos had appeared and wrung it from her hands.He had not even bothered to remember her face.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Wanda Maximoff
Comments: 5
Kudos: 2





	Wake From Restful Slumber

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: This fic discusses grief/mourning.

Laura is a mother untouched by the chill of the world. She is the perfect woman for a white house surrounded by a picket fence, 2.5 children, a dog. Wanda finds that she is patient and kind, gentle and loving, even when Wanda gets upset and blows holes into the roof, shatters picture frames and breaks the television. Laura is the ideal wife.

It is for that reason that Wanda cannot stand to be in her presence.

Cold is all Wanda has, without her brother, without Vision. Life has taken and taken and taken from her until she is not but a shell of a human, alive only on fumes of a vengeance that was never able to be fulfilled. She wakes searching for auras that are not there, will never return to her side again, yet her mind protests and tricks her with glimpses of red and white and words uttered by no one. Wanda lives the life of the dead because it is easier than the alive.

Professor Hulk tells her that those thoughts are unhealthy, depressive. Laura says that it will take time, that soon Wanda will recover herself. Even Steve, old and greying, tells her grief will past.

And it is unfair. It is so unfair, incredibly so, that it tugs and rips at Wanda everyday she opens her eyes and sees the American Flag. Because Steve had his happy ending, his second wish, his entire life with the woman that he loved even though he had Sam here, Bucky, people who wanted him and wished him well and he still left. He still came back.

Wanda had wanted to bring Pietro, and Steve had said no.

Ant-Man, the first one, the old man, had been the one who said it was too dangerous to meddle with other, major realms. The others agreed, and it made Wanda furious. They had done just that, hadn’t they? Ruin other timelines. Ruin other lives.

Was Pietro’s life not enough?

Gone, with her hopes and wishes, Wanda knows she has lost everything. She knows, here, living under Laura’s roof and with Laura’s children, with the baby that is named after two people who have died for his father, she knows that she does not belong. Because Laura watched her beloved disappear out that door to fight aliens and robots, to fight demigods and titans, and because Laura knows every smile and kiss Clint presses against her cheek may be the last she will ever know of him. The missions Clint takes on, the people that he fights, they leave nothing behind. Laura will not even be delivered a flag.

Wanda knows this. She knows it well, the fear when Clint smiles at her, when he hugs her goodbye and tells her he’ll see her soon and she knows that his words will never be enough to quell the beating in her chest. Wanda fears, and hates, and seeps in a swirl of black that coaxes angry red to bleed from her hands, her eyes, her mind. Because she has lost everything, and everyone, Pietro, Vision, Natasha, everything that had sparkled and bloomed and brought her joy, everyone except

“Hey,” Clint greets, sliding under the shade of the yellow flowers. He brings with him the smell of sweat and grease, of hours working under the sun to tend to their crops, their flowers, the tractor that Tony had promised to fix and never did. Never can, anymore. Wanda watches him huff, brush his growing too-long hair from his eyes, and speaks.

“Hello.” It is a marathon to move her tongue, to form her lips in the appropriate shapes and forms; Wanda knows now, acutely more than ever, the feeling haunting Pietro when people spoke. When the entire world moved at a pace different than her own, when people smiled and talked and laughed and she could not because she was so heavy, so slow, and the world would continue spinning regardless.

“What’s a little lady like you doing out on a hot day like this?” Clint’s southern accent is too thick, funny, and Wanda wishes she could giggle. She smiles, instead, a thin pursing of lips, and Clint averts his eyes to the flower patch in their front yard, decorating the porch.

“I wanted to say hello,” Wanda says, and Clint nods. They share a pat at the base of the tree, combing their fingers on old mulch and dirt. It is too early for the flowers to bloom, but she likes to think her presence helps them perk up. She could pull them upwards now, coax them into their fullness, pry their petals open, but she does not. She does not want to do it again.

Not on a day like today.

“Yeah?” Clint asks. He scrapes his fingers against his well-worn jeans. His shirt is stained green from alien fluids, therefore regulated to yard work only. Wanda watches him pick at the stain. “Funny, so did I.”

She does not find it funny, but neither does he. They sit under the shade, waiting for a pleasant breeze that occasionally drifts by in Iowa. She does not have words to say, things that could help fill the emptiness that swarms around her, around him, and it is because of that void spanning between the two that she comforts herself that she has not anything that needs to be said. He would know; he does know.

She fears to open her mouth, so Clint does instead.

“The first time we got drunk on a mission, so, our second mission, basically,” he chuckles here, nostalgic, “it was my birthday. So I wanted a birthday present, and she said she didn’t celebrate birthdays, so I was all, wow, man, who the heck doesn’t celebrate their birthday? Y’know? But then she said she didn’t have one, and uh, well, that’s a pretty good reason.

“She picked. It felt right, kinda, like the Red Room took that from her and this was her taking it back. We could have picked a season, like I wanted winter, cause you know, cold heart and stuff. But she picked, and she wanted the day I brought her back with me. And I got it, because home is home, whenever you find home, and I wanted home to be whatever she wanted home to be.”

Clint gets soft like this, sometimes, blonde and aging and tan, speckled with dots of light peering through the leaves overhead. He is twenty and fifty, a child and an old man, sloppily shot together with stray arrows, and Wanda finds herself wedging her fingers on the in-between, trying to look a little closer at the parts.

It is comforting, not being the only one in pieces.

“I bought them for her for the first time we celebrated her birthday, together. It was me and her and Phil, great guy.” He quiets again, picking at the green stain, and Wanda waits. Phil is another one, a man she does not know other than his ability for greatness, and his ability for pain in his absence. She thinks enough people have hurt Clint, yet the universe continues to crumple his heart.

“So, we, uh, I bought her a cactus. It was all funny, too, cause see? I drew this card, and boy, I’m terribly at drawing, Cap really owes me some lessons,” he laughs, again, and it is hoarse and plastic and Wanda nods because it is better than telling the truth. “I wrote ‘happy birthday, you prickly pear’ on it, and I could have sworn she was going to punch me. Nat, uh, she.” He coughs, scratching at the collar of the shirt, and Wanda waits. It is easier this way.

Easier to sit in silence than to force the words out.

“She did punch me. It was great.” He laughs again. Wanda bundles the skirt around her knees, and closes her eyes. It is better this way. Better to see.

“We could not afford presents,” she begins, and Clint hums. It eases her, the buzzing, and she thinks of Pietro’s hand on her head. “We could not afford food, toys were, hah, out of reach. But Pietro always tried. He got into so, so much trouble.” She shakes her head.

He had got caught once, when he was cocky and tall and stood out with lanky dirty limbs. Pietro had become used to his charm, his flirtations, and Wanda knew that the bruises on his body were not from pinches but from lips and teeth and bites, and she knew that the money he brought back some nights were not from pickpocketing but deals. She knew and could not say, because he would smile and laugh and buy her bread and pretend that he did not care. That it did not matter.

To him, Wanda was the first priority.

To Wanda, he was.

“We were fourteen. And he, we had been out of school, see, because it had cost tuition money.” Wanda can see her old uniform, grey and wrinkled from disuse, still hanging above her bed. When they could afford to hide into a room, it had tended to be a closet, or a drawer, and they would squeeze in together to share space, to share warm. When Pietro had come back one day with a wide smile and more cash from one night than they had stolen from a month, he had brought with him a marks around his throat.

Bodily harm had been extra, but there were always customers willing to pay.

“I went to school. I went, because it was my birthday, and he had paid. A whole semester.” High school had not been easy; she had been three years behind, had no money for clothes, had no time for friends. She survived doing homework using the lights from restaurants, filling out math and language and history forms while running from the men who would come out sometimes, with a broom, or with their hands. They had grabbed and torn her uniform, and she had no other, so the last two weeks of her semester she had come in everyday with the rip in her skirt. The school had not scolded her because she had no other way, or it was because they knew she could never return.

Pietro’s gift to her was a chance of normalcy, and even in the midst of the fighting, of the hunger, of the wonderings if that day would be the final one where the poison in her stomach would melt its way into her skull; she cherished those safe hours in the school building. Education meant lunch, and detention meant extra hours, and the more time she was behind a door the more time she was safe from rallies and gunshots, from rapists and knives.

Pietro was out there, instead.

“She got shot on her second birthday. I laughed, because uh, duh, of course. But me and Phil, we just, we waited for her the whole night. It was just a scrape along her side, but she fell, cause the grappling hook slipped, and I, uh,” Clint stumbles his way through the words. Wanda stares at the grass poking at her ankles, pinching at a few strands.

“I bought her spider lilies. Partially because it’s funny, you know, black widow, red hair, the whole thing. But, also,” Clint takes Wanda’s hand in his, placing them on his thigh. She stares at his hand, at the callouses marking every finger, the ones that haven’t faded from disuse. “They mean reincarnation. And I thought, well, she’s not going to die from this, so why the heck not?”

It is a sentiment Wanda cannot agree with. Red seeps from her fingers, curling around Clint, tugging at the ground. He shakes his head at her, but she cannot control everything, herself least of all, and it is easier to paint the world red than let it dye her black.

If flowers meant so much, why had it not brought back her family?

“I see him, sometimes,” Wanda says, and neither of them know who it is “him” is. “When I wake, I search for him. I think, here, that he would have been happy.” She imagines Vision here, his cloak flowing gently behind him, holding Lila and Cooper in either arm. He would be hesitant, so humanly slow, when artificial nerves conspire his arms to embrace Nathaniel.

Pietro had no such restraint; would have none still. Wanda lived her life in his arms, cradled in his warmth, security, a gentle silver-blue that had disguised them against the cold of the streets. He would have kept her safe, her and Lila, and then Cooper, and Nathaniel, he would love Nathaniel. He would laugh at Clint, call him “Old Man,” poke at the baby, and beam at the greenery that stretches for kilometers, green still unrun by him. Wanda sees him in the room with Laura, smiling fondly at her in a way she cannot, untouched by the cold tendrils that have swarmed their way into her heart and mind after Thanos.

It is less of a thought, and more certainty of loss.

Clint and her sit in silence, watching clouds drift lazily across the sky. It is easy to see why this place has become home for him; in the midst of the city, in the midst of battle, of struggles, of living everyday stolen by someone else, living as no one in nowhere is a moment to breathe. Wanda wonders if his teammates had envied him, had become angry that he had found solitude to unwind, to undress himself from the skin of hero, from demigod, from super solider. She thinks she would have liked this place, too.

But Thanos had come, and he had killed, and she finds that she cannot enjoy the quiet quite so much anymore.

“Laura is a good woman,” Wanda says. It is truth. She is kind, and gracious, a wonderful host to the growing list of Avengers that stop by looking for their own slice of peace. The table always has an open seat for one, or two, or ten, whether they be aliens or earthlings, whether they be former enemies or new friends.

Laura is a good woman, and Wanda cannot fathom how a man as drenched in red as Wanda could find peace in this emptiness.

Clint knows, he must, he does, because he sighs and nods. “Yeah,” he murmurs, “she’s great.”

“You will die and leave her,” Wanda says. It is a fact, not a pleasurable one, and Clint’s face blanks in memory. He will leave her, like Pietro and Vision did, and Laura will sit in alone in her unknown house in the middle of nowhere, will have nothing, will be nothing but a good woman. Wanda knows this and Clint knows this, knows the weight that he had tied around Laura, the crumbling pressures that has swung better men and women into the depths.

He had done this to her, and she had accepted, and Wanda does not know who she is more furious for.

Because Clint will die, out there in a yellow lake cascading over the souls of millions. He will smile and laugh and keep Wanda safe, because that is all everyone does, all they care for, even if she does not wish to be comforted. He will die out there, with his wife and his children, with Wanda, alone, because if Wanda has lost everything, then he has lost twice as much. There is no family Clint has had that hadn’t left its scars buried in his soul, baring still and bleeding.

Wanda had been stung just once; when Pietro had realized he would rather leave than be the one left behind.

Wanda should hate him for that but she cannot.

Vision had been the fault of Thanos. Wanda had cried, had borne her soul bare, had plunged red tendrils into her body and his and felt the weight of the world fracture the threads tying them together. She had torn herself into pieces, felt the remaining shards of her, of Vision, of Pietro, linked together by the mind stone, and she had shattered it. It had been awful, but it had been her choice.

Then Thanos had appeared, and wrung it from her hands.

He had not even bothered to remember her face.

“It’s over, Wanda,” Clint murmurs, pressing her hand to his face. It is unfair, the smoothness of his skin, the fading wrinkles from his face. He sees himself reflected in her eyes, and she cannot do this, not now, when the wounds feel so fresh.

She cannot do this, not today.

“Laura misses you,” Wanda says and Clint frowns. He is not displeased with her, disappointed, and the word worms itself into her core to grapple its talons into her mind. The sound of Nathaniel laughing drives both gazes over to him, to Laura, sitting on the porch. She tugs the length of her skirt to the side, smiling down at her son in the gardens. Soon, Lila and Cooper will return home.

“It became tradition—spider lilies.” Clint murmurs. Clint could pursue her, her heart, her warping mind, and he does not. Wanda is uncertain if it brings her pain or joy that he is still so careful about her, with her, and there is that tenderness in his fingers around hers. She nods, crawling closer in the settling dirt, watching thin green stems sprout and grow.

If Nathaniel notices, he does not say a word. Laura is on her laptop, typing away at another bestseller.

“They were just for her. Just a reminder, for her being reckless. Wild. She’s always been like that; you know?” She does, remembers Natasha’s hair floating as she ran and kicked and shot and screamed, passion and fury and a lifetime of vengeance that birthed greatness. Wanda had loved her as much as Clint, and then Natasha had left her alone.

Alone, alone, a single rock in a pool of blood.

“And then Phil died. I didn’t, I wasn’t,” it is hard, even now, for Clint to grasp the feelings of being under the Mind Stone. Wanda knows, and she doesn’t, and she does not pretend to. There is content in there, content at playing at nothing, at being nothing, but the content is nothing more than a thin skin of the mass of fury. The grey weight of nothingness, the yellow sparks of fear, the red that dyes his skin and pulls him under the deep blue, blue of the cube, blue of the skies, blue of his eyes seeing nothing but Loki embracing his face, smiling.

It is okay, she wants to say, to assure, but Clint is staring at her still, seeing her, her mind, her spirit heavy as mountains, and her mouth does not move.

“Phil died. And I wasn’t there. We, Nat and I, we bought him spider lilies.” What Clint did not know, what Natasha did not know, the whole team, shrouded in dark and lies, is that Phil Coulson lived. He lives on, playing director to people who have never owed him debts as heavy. She wonders if he is happier, like that. Lighter. More free.

She hates him for that, for leaving Clint, for leaving Natasha, and she does not say it because if she did her hatred may truly come true.

“You bought them for Pietro,” she says instead. She remembers, crying, weightless only because one half of her had brought her joy and love and wonder, and then it had gone. Clint had brought her back to Earth, had chained her down to the bed, had taken the face of her brother and slid his eyes shut. She had cried until no tears could flow, and then her soul had cried, furious, screaming, alone, and the team could not walk to her floor without feeling the same warm tears that should have trailed her face.

Vision had stayed. He had no tears to cry, no people to tie him down, none to let him go. He had come because he had nothing and Wanda had nothing, because he was not JARVIS and not Ultron, because he was as much an orphan as she.

Natasha had come. She spoke clearly even with tears trickling from her eyes, firm, bold, powerful even in the face of nothingness. Bruce had left her and Wanda had hated him too for what he had done. For leaving people who had nothing left. For leaving the Avengers, for leaving Natasha, for leaving Wanda alone with a broken family when she was already so shattered.

Clint. Clint had been everything.

He cried with his soul. His face would scrunch up, horribly, terribly, red and wet eyes and snot from his nose and the bandages on his cheek would crinkle wet from tears. He cried with his shoulders shaking and his back bending forward, hands wiping and cradling his face, rubbing his ears, playing with his hair and the tattered sleeves of the sweatshirt he was opt to wear. Clint cried with grief and joy and emptiness, cried because it was right, cried because Wanda wanted him to because she could no longer cry herself. He cried because the world takes and takes and takes, and he cries because he does not want it to take from Wanda anymore.

Clint cries for Wanda, a bouquet of spider lilies lain over Pietro’s body, and Wanda found new tears in herself.

She finds them now, prickling at the edges of her eyes.

“You brought them for Natasha,” she remembers, and Clint’s eyes soften, they always do, and he takes her hands in his. She lays on him, her head against his chest, listening for beats that do not pound.

The team had been broken up after Tony’s death, separate in finding their own ways. Steve had found his happy ending, leaving Bucky and Sam to share the title of Captain America together. Bruce had to be hospitalized, and returned to living as Professor Hulk, older, kinder, spending his time caring for children as he always wished. Thor returned to space with the Guardians of the Galaxy in search for Gamora.

Clint stayed with Wanda, even though his family was back, even though Laura was back. He had stayed and waited for Wanda, because he was all she had left.

What Clint does not know, what he could never know but now, here, under the shade of the tree, Wanda knows he undoubtedly knows, is that Wanda had died and known it. She had awoken in a sea of yellow, in a city that was not New York but was, looking for Vision and finding a green skinned girl instead. What Clint had not known is that Wanda had spoken to the girl, had learned about her, had discovered every fragment there was to her father. Wanda had known Gamora because they were both girls left behind.

Wanda had seen Pietro.

It was an accident. He was just a blur, faceless, blue and white clouds in a world of yellow and Wanda had known from the pit of her soul, half empty, half full. She had known and she had screamed, red turned yellow swarming in her soul, and then he had been there, young, pale, skinny and still stained red from the 27 holes in his body.

He had smiled at her, had hugged her, had kissed the top of her hair and pressed her hands against his. He had been there, and Wanda had needed him.

Then she had opened her eyes, and Thanos had been there in Pietro’s steed.

“I did,” Clint says, and Wanda is back to the flowers, to the shade, the sunlight peering through the branches to dot along the bridge of Clint’s nose. She is here, safe, a world away from Thanos, away from death, and even so her chest aches empty so.

One in fourteen billion, and she would rather be in any other timeline.

“She hated me for those flowers. First thing she did when she saw me was throw a bouquet in my face,” Clint laughs. Wanda’s heart pounds hearing that, again, the same words Clint finds every year she sits under this tree. Natasha had been furious at him, lashing, kicking, but after the bouquet was hugs, kisses, an embrace and tears that had run more wickedly than any Wanda could have conjured from the assassin. Clint had been so happy, to see Natasha again.

Wanda wants Vision. She wants Pietro. She wants Natasha, and maybe it is greedy, maybe it is cruel, but she wants, she wants, she wants because she needs to fill the emptiness that suffocates her when her eyes upon and reality sets back in. She needs and she wants, and what she needs is

“Stay,” Wanda begs. Clint holds her in his arms, holds her shakes, tremors that rock her body, spill the red over the cliffs. It bleeds from her eyes, her hands, and she feels the ground beneath her tremble. “Stay. Please.”

She doesn’t want to say goodbye.

Clint kisses the crown of her hair and she sobs harder. It is always hard like this, knowing the sun will set, knowing that the darkness she tries to keep at bay is always within her, clawing, tearing at her insides.

“I should say hi to Laura,” Clint whispers, and Wanda feels, for a horrible moment, such fury and envy welling within her. It is unjust, it is unright, and she wishes to apologize even though Clint has already accepted, already squeezes her closer to his body.

Because Laura is the perfect woman. She is beautiful, kind, mature, a mother to every man she meets. Laura is just in nature and ferocious in life, sweet to her children away from home, kinder still to the one who is just young enough to hide in her yard. She is the American dream, funny, sweet, comfortable enough in a white house and 2.5 kids.

Wanda pushes and screams and trashes and bargains with Heaven, with Hell, staring at Death in the face as she wrings souls from its tattered body. Wanda enters the empty body of Death and pulls at it, eats at it, burns away at the void until she finds the single dot of red in her peripheral. She reaches, and she pulls.

Laura is the ideal wife. Clint loves her, loved her, loves her still.

But he loves Wanda more, even if she steals him from sleep once a year.

“I love you, kid,” Clint promises and Wanda nods, because it is all she will have for the next 364 days. It is all she can have, and it is all she will take.

The world can have the rest of her—all she wants is this.

Nathaniel has returned indoors, muddy from his time pulling weeds, watering crops, fixing the tractor while listening to voices on the wind. He will call Lila, Cooper, tell them the message his father asked him to pass along. Four years of this; he is no stranger.

Laura sits at the porch still, rocking. She slides the lid of her laptop close, peering over the balcony to stare at Wanda. Through Clint. Just her.

Wanda nods.

“I love you,” She whispers, and Clint smiles even as he shimmers under the light. He pales, gloomy, transparent, legs swirling to dust and eyes fading to glitter. He swivels around the post, around the porch, and then his hand is on Laura’s, laughing.

Wanda stands, alone. The wind in Iowa has returned, bringing with it a gentle breeze that wisps her hair around her vision. Laura is still laughing, weary joy in the wrinkles along her eyes, speaking to the air. She gestures at the chocolate cake slice on the porch, winking and tossing her hair back. Wanda wonders what she must look like, selfish, greedy, hogging Clint’s time to herself.

Pietro had once said that he experiences life in a day, and Wanda will always find herself wishing that this one day would stretch so long.

“Oh,” Clint murmurs and Wanda startles, spinning to her side. He smiles at her reaction, something curious and ethereal settling back to his being, as though forgetting what it is like to emote. Perhaps he is. Laura stands from the porch and waves at Wanda, letting the door slide shut behind her.

It is just Wanda then, her and Clint, and that in itself is unfamiliar. Clint visits Laura last, always, departing after wishing his wife farewell.

Here he is, though. Fading from the world and yet still here, smile to her shock.

“Almost forgot,” Clint says, and then he is gone in a fizz of gold and purple and black, colors he had worn under the moment the water had pulled him under. Wanda watches him go.

“Thanks for the flowers, kid.”

She exits the shade of the tree, a pool of red spider lilies at her feet.

**Author's Note:**

> I started this shortly after watching Endgame. There were a lot of feelings in that movie and I, like wanda, couldn't bring myself to acknowledge the end of an era (and what an end at that).
> 
> I have a lot I want to say and also nothing at all. Rewrote this ending note four times, so I'll just boil it down to what matters. Know that you are precious, you are cherished, and your life matters.


End file.
